A dead vaquita in San Felipe photographed in 1992. The vaquita’s facial markings have led it to be labeled the ‘panda of the sea.’
Photograph: Omar Vidal/Reuters

Today, there are approximately 7.3 billion people on the planet – and only 60 vaquitas. The vaquita has seen its population drop by 92 percent in less than 20 years in Mexico’s Gulf of California as the tiny porpoises suffocate to death one-by-one in gillnets. Now, scientists with the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA) are cautiously moving forward on a once unthinkable option: captive breeding.

“We have no idea whether it is feasible to find, capture and maintain vaquitas in captivity much less whether they will reproduce,” said Barbara Taylor, one of the world’s foremost experts on the vaquita with NOAA. “The uncertainties are large.”

Captive breeding of vaquita, if it ever happens, would be a last-ditch and incredibly risky action, according to scientists. The world’s smallest porpoise and cetacean, vaquita (Phocoena sinus) are shy and retiring with eye patches that have led them to be described fondly as the ‘pandas of the sea.’ These rarely-seen porpoises also have the smallest range of any cetacean, only inhabiting about 2,300 square kilometres of marine waters in Mexico.

A photo of a presumably dead vaquita caught in a net set for totoaba from February 1992. Photograph: Omar Vidal/AFP/Getty Images

Until now scientists have been more than willing to leave them in their home waters, even as they watched the population plummet over two decades. This is because it’s quite possible that any captured vaquitas would perish quickly outside of their habitat. And even if they don’t, trying to get a pair of vaquita to mate and produce a healthy calf under captive conditions would likely require lots of trial and error – and there aren’t many vaquita left to bargain with.

But after a survey in December, scientists realised that the situation had become “so dire that all conservation options need to be considered,” said Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, the chair of CIRVA and a vaquita expert.

In addition, porpoise husbandry and capture rates have improved to a point where vaquitas just might stand a chance in captivity, according to Taylor. Such facts helped push a number of members of CIRVA to recommend beginning research on what a captive program might look like.

One idea is that captive breeding wouldn’t have to occur in an aquarium facility. Christopher J. Gervais, who currently heads the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival but has worked with vaquitas in the past, said a potentially less-risky option would be to move a population to a “protected cove as opposed to tanks in a marine park.”

No other government before has done so much for the vaquita as the current one.

Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho

But at this point it’s all speculative. There is no immediate plan to attempt to catch a wild vaquita, only a plan to begin studying the idea. The scientists don’t want discussion of captive breeding to undermine Mexico’s resolve in what they say is the real battle today: banning gillnets and fighting the illegal trade in totoaba fish.

“Without removal of gillnets, vaquitas will almost certainly perish in a few years,” Taylor said.

As it stands, Mexico’s gillnet ban, which currently covers only the most northern portion of vaquita habitat, will end next May. Mexico also still allows gillnet fishing for corvina (Cilus gilberti) even in the banned area. Conservationists want a blanket, permanent gillnet ban over all vaquita waters.

“No other government before has done so much for the vaquita as the current one,” said Rojas-Bracho, but he added the government is still struggling to turn around the situation because past administrations “did nothing or very little to protect this endemic species of Mexico.”

Today, the biggest threat to the vaquita may well be the booming illegal trade in “aquatic cocaine”: the swim bladders of totoaba for consumption in China. The current ban has not stopped illegal fishers from targeting totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) for the Chinese market. Swim bladders from fish in the Sciaenidae family are considered curatives in traditional Chinese medicine, despite a lack of any supporting scientific evidence.

“It’s a bit like drugs, if there is a demand there will always be drug dealers. In this case if there is a demand there will always be fishers willing to risk very little…and make thousands of dollars,” Rojas-Bracho said.

And these swim bladders, also known as maw, are as lucrative as drugs in China. A hundred grams of totoaba swim bladder can fetch £1,750 to £6,500 in China, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency. Although the vaquita gets the bulk of press and attention, the totoaba is also considered critically endangered by the IUCN. And no one knows how many totoaba are left. In this case, the demand for one luxury product in China could spell doom for two species.

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Conservationists fear the worsening swim bladder trade could be the final straw that either forces scientists to attempt captive breeding or simply kills off every last vaquita – and all this could happen within just a few years.

“The clock is ticking loudly down towards extinction and we must not waste any time seeing whether at least some vaquitas could be taken into safety,” Taylor said.

Yet not everyone agrees that captive breeding should even be tried.

“Capturing vaquitas to breed them would be far too risky and is not a viable option,” Omar Vidal, the head of WWF-Mexico, told the Associated Press. “With only around 60 vaquitas left, we simply cannot gamble with killing some while experimenting. Every single vaquita counts!”

He said the only thing that could be done was “focusing all efforts and resources in eliminating [the vaquita’s] accidental deaths in fishing activities.”

Of course, a final tool remains for conservationists: cloning. Taylor said scientists don’t currently have good genetic material of vaquitas, but that could change if some are brought into captivity.

Rojas-Bracho, however, noted that researchers at NOAA’s South West Fisheries Science Centre are working with old and degraded vaquita DNA to map out a genetic library “that accurately reflect[s] the original DNA input.” He expects scientists will eventually have “good quality” DNA of vaquitas even without catching a living specimen. But successful cloning of an endangered species still remains more scientific fiction than science fact.

We are “a long way from Jurassic Park,” Rojas-Bracho said.

Even with the mounting difficulties and the falling population, Taylor said there was still cause for hope. Mexico has saved two species closer to extinction than the vaquita: the Guadalupe fur seal and the northern elephant seal.

“It is not too late…The [northern elephant seal] was thought to be depleted to around 30 individuals and now numbers in the hundreds of thousands. But...you have to stop killing them.”

In this undated photo released by Proyecto Vaquita, children pose for a photograph next to a dead porpoise at the Gulf of California. Photograph: C.D'Agrosa/ASSOCIATED PRESS

For now, though, the killing continues. In March, researchers found three vaquita corpses where once hundreds swam. So, that’s 57 vaquitas now remaining in the world – at best.

Time may be running out, but conservationists say they aren’t giving up yet.

“This not an occurrence through natural selection where a species has runs its course. Vaquita are disappearing because of direct human activity,” Gervais said. “It is our responsibility to do everything possible to save the species.”